Introduction

Youth and adult education comprises a set of multiple formal and informal processes and practices related to basic and general education, and the acquisition of cultural, social, technical and professional knowledge, extending to almost all areas of social life. About the meanings attributed to this modality of teaching ^{Almeida and Corso (2015}, p. 1284) clarify that,

Youth and adult education have a historical path of discontinuous actions, marked by a diversity of programs, often not characterized as schooling. With the approval of LDB 9394/96, EJA is characterized as a modality of basic education corresponding to the care of young people and adults who have not attended or completed elementary education. These documents reported conceptual changes and extensions produced since the late 1980s, using the term Youth and Adult Education to mark actions formerly known as Supplemental Education.

This paper intends to perform an analysis of the political and pedagogical principles, methodologies and ideals present in the Brazilian Movement of Education - MOBRAL created during the Military Regime (1964-1985), through Law Number 5,379 of 12/15/1967. However, only in 1970, with its isolation of the National Department of Education-DNE and transformation of its initial proposal, MOBRAL became an executing agency for literacy and continuing education programs for youth and adults. During this period, education for illiterate youth and adults was characterized by quantitative expansion, which resulted in a massification process, disregarding the apropriate structures to guarantee quality, since the priority goal was to eradicate illiteracy in the country in ten years of activity.

Considered as “the work and arm of the military dictatorship” Ferraro (2013, p. 76), MOBRAL has been one of the most extensive and complex adult education programs ever developed in the country. Authors such as ^{Oliveira (1989}) and Souza (2016) point MOBRAL as an important instrument for the legitimacy of the regime, for the removal of left wing threats that pervaded popular education, and the construction of an ideal of democracy guided by the dictatorial regime² from 1964 to 1985. Reflecting the political, economic and social context of its time, MOBRAL was being restructured to diversify its activities in an attempt to justify its existence and ensure the continuity of its programs.

However, the reformulations of the movement, the expansion of its field of activities, and the entire organizational structure set up to operate in all Brazilian municipalities were not enough to achieve its initial and priority goal: eradicate illiteracy by 1980. Data from the IBGE Demographic Census show that in the 1970s the country had, among the Brazilian population over 15 years of age, an illiteracy rate of 33.6%. In the 1980s, after ten years of operation of MOBRAL, this rate was 25.4% (a reduction of only 8.2%), an index too far from the initial expectations of its organizers, who predicted an illiteracy rate lower than 10% in the early 1980s. On February 6, 1985, by Decree number 92,374, EDUCAR Foundation was created to replace MOBRAL, extinguished at the same time.

MOBRAL: its institutionalization and the launch of mass education programs

The 1964 coup overthrew President João Goulart, establishing a dictatorial regime that lasted from 1964 to 1985. According to ^{Spigolon (2014}, p.89) “the April 1964 political-military movement represents on the one hand, a coup against social reforms that were defended by progressive sectors of Brazilian society and on the other hand, a coup against incipient political democracy born in 1945”.

Resulting from a military and civil alliance, the coup represented the rise of a new group in power, which would involve the articulation among the groups of the ruling classes, i.e., the industrial and financial bourgeois (national and international), the mercantile capital, the landowners and the military staff, as well as a group of intellectuals and technocrats linked to IPES - the Institute of Research and Social Studies. IPES was officially created in 1961 by a group of executives, bankers and technicians from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, also known as “technocrats”. This group corresponded to the main bourgeois representative entity, along with the military staff and some conservative sectors of the Catholic Church, to act against the national reformist government of João Goulart (^{GERMANO, 2011}). IPES collaborators included Mário Henrique Simonsen and Arlindo Lopes Corrêa, the main organizers of MOBRAL in 1967.

Analyzing the performance of the Military State in the field of education in Brazil, ^{Germano (2011}) identified in general, the main axes around which the educational policy was developed:

1) Political and ideological control of school education at all levels. Such control, however, does not occur linearly, but it is established according to the correlation of forces existing in the different historical conjunctures of that time. [...] 2) Establishment of a direct and immediate relationship, according to the “theory of human capital”, between education and capitalist production [...] 3) Incentive to research linked to capital accumulation. 4) Failure to commit to the financing of public and free education, denying, in practice, the discourse of valorization of education and decisively contributing to the corruption and privatization of education, transformed into a profitable and subsidized business by the State. (^{GERMANO, 2011}, p.105-106).

In this context, the government aimed to establish a mass education system as an instrument for the maintenance of political power and the legitimation of the existing economic and social structures of domination. In this sense, ^{Gramsci (2001}) recognizes mass education as an important mechanism for the construction of collective and individual consciousness, and criticizes its use as an instrument of domination and control, with which the State seeks to maintain its hegemony and gain the active consent of those under his rules. In this perspective of domination, the military government launched in 1967 MOBRAL - Brazilian Literacy Movement.

On September 8, 1967, the occasion of the Celebration of the International Literacy Day declared by UNESCO, the Minister of Education and Culture Tarso Dutra, with the President of the Republic Marechal Costa e Silva, signed several decrees providing the formation of an interministerial group - IG - to survey and raise funds for literacy (Decree 61,311); the use of television broadcasters in literacy programs (Decree 61,312); the formation of the National Network of Functional Literacy and Continuing Education for Adults (Decree 61,313); the implementation of Civic Education in the trade union institutions and a campaign for the eradication of illiteracy (Decree 61,314).

After the closure of the IG activities, it was established by Law 5,379 of December 15, 1967, under the terms of Article 4, the Brazilian Literacy Movement - MOBRAL:

Art. 4º - The Executive Power is authorized to establish a Foundation, under the denomination of Brazilian Literacy Movement - MOBRAL, of indefinite duration, with headquarters and forum in the city of Rio de Janeiro, State of Guanabara, while their transfer to Brasilia is not possible. (MEC, 1973, p.50).

By Ministerial Ordinance number 28 of January 18, 1968, a special commission was appointed to prepare the MOBRAL Statutes, which were approved by Decree 62,484 of March 29, 1968. The statutes enviseged, in general terms, the purpose, the autonomy, the assets, the organization and attributions of the different administrative agencies: the Presidency, the Administrative Council and the Board of Curators.

Despite the rapid definition of the statutes, organization chart and all administrative structure, MOBRAL was waiting for the financial means needed to execute its action plan. These funds were only obtained later by Decree 66,118 of February 1970, which granted the part of the revenue of the Sports Lottery to the adult literacy programs supervised by MEC; and Decree number 1,124 of September 1970, which allowed companies to donate 1% of their income tax to the MOBRAL Foundation.

The restructuring of MOBRAL³ took place in 1970, due to internal disagreements between the DNE staff and the Minister of Education Jarbas Passarinho, who showed interest in carrying out an adult literacy project involving the private sector and members of the Ministry of Planning and Ipea. On June 3, the Priest Felipe Spotorno was indicated for the Executive Secretariat (SEXEC) and the economist Prof. Mario Henrique Simonsen, who adopted a new policy of action, for the presidency of MOBRAL, with a three-year term. According to Souza (2016, p. 59)

Simonsen's arrival at MOBRAL demonstrated an increasingly trend in military government- the technocracy. Minister Roberto Campos's disciple, Simonsen projected MOBRAL's goals and revenue in a manner compatible with the economic interests at stake, promising, in a relatively short time, to develop an “extensive literacy action” that would end illiteracy in Brazil by 1980.

September 8, 1970 was considered the official day for the launch of the new phase of MOBRAL, which moved from being a resource-granting body to become the executor of its own programs, and thus, consolidating its role as an autonomous and independent organization. The first agreements were signed between the MOBRAL Foundation and its newly formed Municipal Commissions in all municipalities that were part of the Ministry of Interior's Plan of Action. Having secured the financial resources, the new leadership outlined the guidelines that enabled MOBRAL to be installed at national, state and municipal levels and to launch of a broad mass literacy program that aimed at eradicating illiteracy by the end of 1980s, as well as deploying an infrastructure that would allow it to offer continued action to adolescents and adults.

According to its initial objectives: the eradication of illiteracy and the continued education, MOBRAL developed two basic programs: the Functional Literacy Program - PAF and the Integrated Education Program - PEI. Other programs were launched during its activities: MOBRAL Cultural, the Community Development Program (PDC), the Self-Teaching Program and the Professionalization Program, which together formed the Permanent Education System. From 1975, with the diversification of the movement and the restructuring of the PDC, the Community Education Program for Health (PES) and the Diversified Community Action Program (PRODAC) were created.

Arlindo Lopes Corrêa: the intellectual of MOBRAL

According to ^{Haddad and Di Pierro (2000}, p. 116), the engineer and economist Arlindo Lopes Corrêa assumed the presidency of MOBRAL in 1974, “with the responsibility of defending the program and ensuring its continuity, formulating technical justifications in response to the great deal of criticism of the program⁴”.

Among these justifications, ^{Corrêa (1979}, p.46), emphasizes the democratizing function of permanent education, since it should “serve primarily the poorest parts of the population, generally unable, by their own means, to build their educational growth and thus, unable to rise socially, politically and economically”.

In 1979, MOBRAL launched the book “Mass Education and Community Action”, composed of nineteen chapters written by several MOBRAL-related authors, senior technicians and members of MOBRAL Central's top management, and of their planning and supervisory systems. Taken together, the book “is dedicated to narrating MOBRAL's achievements in order to explain its creation, justify its actions, structure and functionality, and especially defending from the accusations.” (SOUZA, 2016, p.184).

The presentation texts: “MOBRAL - Pedagogy of Free Men” - and the closing texts: “The Future of MOBRAL” were signed by Arlindo Lopes Corrêa. The author declares his intention:

[...] to record the experience of MOBRAL for the forthcoming generation. We do not seek the applause of the present, but we are confident that the future will recognize the immense value of our work, so revolutionary that for sure, it could not help raising doubt, for it has been so throughout human history with similar achievements. [...] And we have ambitions, of course, because we know our ability to serve and we want to do more and more. However, fraud exists only in the ideas, words, and gestures of those who try unsuccessfully to tarnish our huge success. (^{CORRÊA, 1979}, p. 12-13).

In a pretentious and outpouring way, ^{Corrêa (1979}, p. 11) countered the criticism received by the program: “But evidenced the success, the criticism came with overwhelming winds, because nothing is done well with impunity, because there it is the incompetence to fight the hero, the idol, the one who stands out ”. He also made an analogy between MOBRAL and the emergence of life on Earth in a reference to Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution⁵. The president of the agency did not spare adjectives to defend the methodology of MOBRAL, originally inherited from the economic area, and praise the work of the team of economists and members of Ipea:

Although the methodological treatment given to the education sector was exclusively economic, the work was rich in discoveries and, in opening new ways, for the unprecedented approach, despite the outdated statistics, the lack of studies and research - some of the state's inheritances of a chaotic educational administration found in 1964 - it was possible to identify waste and irrational decisions. [...] At the same time, it was necessary to conquer the intellectual means and the public opinion for the Economy of Education. [...] At that time, many important names in the Brazilian economy reinforced our theses - mainly Roberto Campos, Mario Simonsen and Delfim Neto -, supporting them with the power centers and the media. (^{CORRÊA, 1979}, p. 18-19).

Not only did he try to exalt the work of MOBRAL but also justify the need for continuity of its programs, ^{Corrêa (1979}) strove to criticize and disqualify the adult education initiatives of the popular culture movements of the 1960s addressed in 2.1.3, particularly the Paulo Freire method and the “liberating education” of his “pedagogy of the oppressed”:

When we hear about the platitudes of international communism, its so-called “liberating education”, its “pedagogy of the oppressed”, it occurs to us that all this begins with the great contradiction that the human being is called to figure within a scheme which has a predetermined goal and such a man will have no influence on it at all. Or are Marxist dogmas subject to criticism in the “Centers of Culture” where the “pedagogy of the oppressed” is done? There is no doubt: it is really a pedagogy of the oppressed. There could not be something more oppressive ... Conversely, in MOBRAL people freely discuss, without any intervention, the things of their world, which is also the world of the literacy teacher recruited there, in the environment where their students live. [...] in the course of the “pedagogy of the oppressed” these are revolutionary words that incite armed struggle and class hatred. The "liberating education", in Brazil, used as literacy teachers the universitary students engaged in their campaign of incitement to subversion. It was not a literacy movement with a radical political tone: it was a radical politicization campaign, if subversive, that took advantage of literacy as its culture broth. [...] Like so many other things, the prestige of “liberating education” is the result of an intense promotional campaign of international communism, just an instrument of the “mechanism”. [...] Our education is truly democratic: we show the truth and people freely make their choices. Rather than the “pedagogy of the oppressed”, we prefer the “pedagogy of free men”. (^{Correa, 1979}, p.50-51, emphasis added).

^{Corrêa's (1979}) position reflected the social and political context of the military government: the opposition to the social and popular education movements of the 1960s, considered subversive and mistakenly pointed out as the fruit of Marxism and international communism⁶. The speech of the president of the institution also reveals the contradiction of MOBRAL's educational proposal, when proclaiming a “truly democratic” education, where students “argue freely and without any intervention”, in a country that lived under the yoke of censorship and of the authoritarianism of the military dictatorship⁷.

Still confronting the “pedagogy of the oppressed”, ^{Corrêa (1979}, p.51) claimed that MOBRAL served “millions of students and not few, as in the pedagogy of the oppressed”. It would not be equivalent nor fair to compare the number of students served by a national mass education program through committees operating in all Brazilian municipalities and that received large financial funds such as MOBRAL, with short-term unofficial initiatives located in few cities in the Northeast and Southeast; like the experiences in MCP - Popular Culture Movements and CPC - Popular Culture Centers, that used the method of Paulo Freire, the educator.

In posts by Arlindo Lopes ^{Corrêa in 2009} and 2010 on his personal blog on the internet, the engineer and economist dealt with topics such as education, employment and income, old age, sports, community action, economics of education, demography, social responsibility, planning, public policies and social projects. Among the 59 posts made, Corrêa (2009) wrote about his professional experience as a member of Ipea and MOBRAL. Regarding his career at MOBRAL, Corrêa praises the institution, the work of the supervisory team and their collaborators, the artists, authors and former students who supported their programs, and his management: “In partnership with the National Bank of Housing (BNH), we created the Ideas Counter - the construction techniques designed to cheapen popular housing to be presented by the MOBRAL clientele. Thirty years ago ... reaffirming the pioneering spirit of MOBRAL”. (^{CORRÊA, Nov 3, 2009}).

^{Corrêa (2009}) also mentions some conflicts of the past, trying to defend himself against the criticisms that were made to the institution: “In relation to MOBRAL, the lies that go around are so many and so bizarre and shameless that sometimes I don't know whether I should laugh or cry. But one thing I am sure: one day the truth will prevail ... What I am not sure is whether I will receive these INSS arrears!” (^{CORRÊA, Nov 26, 2009}).

As executive secretary from 1972 to 1974, and especially as president from 1974 to 1981, Arlindo Lopes Corrêa was the great creator, manager, representative and defender of MOBRAL, as his speech sought to mediate the institution's political and ideological unity, and to legitimize his work before national and international public opinion. According to Gramsci (198-, p.07):

Each social group originated from an essential role in the world of economic production, creates for itself, at the same time and in an organic way, one or more layers of intellectuals that give it homogeneity and awareness of its own role, not only in the economic, but also social and political field: the capitalist businessman generates the technician to the industry, the scientist to the economic policy, the organizer generates a new culture, a new right, and so on.

The author explains that intellectuals⁸ are the officials who perform the organizational and connective functions of a ruling class trying to maintain its hegemony: “Intellectuals are the 'commissioners' of the ruling group for the subordinate functions of social hegemony and political government." (GRAMSCI, 198-, p.14). This group of intellectuals is represented in MOBRAL by the aforementioned president of the institution and the occupants of the highest positions of MOBRAL Central Management. They are responsible for the elaboration and definition of the methodological principles and lines of action of the institution, in order to ensure consensus between the masses and the ruling group, thus playing an essential role in the ideological and political direction of the existing hegemony.

Analysis of MOBRAL objectives, methodologies and teaching material

Among the various programs launched by MOBRAL, the Functional Literacy Program (PAF) was MOBRAL's central and basic program, which served the largest number of people and consumed most of its resources. The functional literacy advocated by MOBRAL is “that which provides adolescents and adults with the practical and immediate application of reading, writing and counting techniques, allowing them better living conditions.” (MOBRAL, 1975, p.41). According to the MOBRAL Basic Document:

Functional Literacy, which is the first step towards achieving the goals of MOBRAL, seeks to provide the individual with:

Analyzing the objectives contained in the political project of MOBRAL, Mendonça (1985, p.87) understands that “only the guarantee of participation of mobral students in the political process is a viable and verifiable objective: the mobral student, by signing his name, leaves the condition of being illiterate and acquires the right to vote and to be voted”.

The objectives of functional literacy, by emphasizing the development of working habits and the understanding of written and oral orders by literacy students, reveal the tendency of MOBRAL to consider education as an investment in labor training; corroborating the technical aspect and its idea of education as an assumption of economic development.

With a view to achieving the goals of PAF, MOBRAL has chosen its own methodology “which is characterized by giving the adult awareness of his condition of a Man and his possibilities to be fulfiiled as a Person, thus giving orientation in an existential perspective.” (MOBRAL, 1973a, p.14). According to MOBRAL Basic Document:

MOBRAL did not elect any specific method of literacy in advance. Known methods have been adopted to select the one that best fitted the needs of a mass program, based on the initial results obtained, being flexible enough to meet the particularities of each region and each population group involved. The method, therefore, is the ECLETIC, based on the decomposition of GENERATING WORDS.

These are based on the basic needs of MAN, linked to the themes of survival, security, social needs, and self-fulfillment, which ensures a high degree of interest and involvement of students. (MOBRAL, 1795, p. 43).

It was a phonic-syllabic method systematized from the decomposition of the generating words illustrated in the generator poster: “the generating word is the basis for the study of phonemes and the discovery of new words, and must always be related to the generator poster”. (MOBRAL, 1973b, p.56). The phonic-syllabic method started from the decomposition of parts (syllables and phonemes) to the whole (word), that is, from synthesis to analysis (^{ARAÚJO, 2006}). After assembling the letters into syllables, the student became acquainted with the “syllable families”, and then he was taught to read the formed word, with the combination of syllables new words were formed and finally he learned isolated sentences.

Analyzing the methodological characteristics of PAF, there is the concern with the structuring of planning schemes, activities and standardized teaching techniques, targeting the program efficiency and productivity, in a predetermined pedagogical action to be performed by volunteers who, most of them, had no training for the teaching profession. About this topic Gramsci (198-, p. 122) warns that the student will only actively participate in the school if it is linked to life: “The more the new programs affirm and theorize about the student's activity and their arduous collaboration with the teacher's work, the more elaborated they are, as if the student were a mere passivity ”.

Major publishers Abril, Vecchi, Primor, Bloch and LISA - Livros Irradiantes, produced the didactic material used by MOBRAL. Once approved⁹, the material was purchased by MOBRAL Central and distributed to the communities. To reduce costs and favor the Logistics Subsystem, a unique material for the whole country was adopted. According to the organizers of the MOBRAL System (1973a, p. 15), “such material is analyzed by the technical team of MOBRAL / Central, who is concerned with selecting it according to its suitability to the student's reality, in order to integrate him into his group and society.” However, by adopting a unique material for the entire country, MOBRAL ignored the regional specificities and the different realities experienced by the students.

Despite being produced by different publishers, PAF didactic material presented a methodological orientation and standardized working techniques according to the criteria adopted by MOBRAL for approval and acquisition of such didactic sets. The generating words are inspired by the same themes, as are the contents of reading books and language and math exercise books¹⁰.

The content of the didactic material for functional literacy and continuing education was based on the needs considered, by the Pedagogical Management-GEPED team, as fundamental to man: education, health, housing, work, food, leisure, among others; that should lead to the choice of generating words that generally varied little among the publications of different publishers.

Aspects considered by MOBRAL as essential to the individual and his life in community: work, hygiene habits, fulfillment of civil obligations, community participation, patriotism, among others, linked to the didactic and methodological set. In the illustrations it was dissiminated the values, norms and precepts that engendered Brazilian military thought and its political action, such as respect for the authorities, order, hierarchy and discipline, in phrases such as “The people live orderly; The people help the country; Everyone should help”. According to ^{Puglia (2004}, p. 03-04):

One of the most important points for military thinking, which is linked not only to political but also to social aspects, is the organicist conception of society, which implies that it must be orderly, averse to conflict or confusion, i.e., committed to the order. Military organicist sentiment now operates in several fields, to not only maintain order and organize the military apparatus itself, but also to expand as a form of social analysis.

It should be outlined that this “order” was established through censorship, institutional acts, exile and disappearance of political opponents, and citizens whose ideals were considered subversive.

The didactic material sought to convey an optimistic, peaceful and fragmented view of reality, in which there was no room for conflict, questioning and contradictions. Students were disseminated the idea that it would be enough to work, participate in the functional literacy program, maintain health and hygiene habits, and fulfill their civil obligations that, as a result, the individual would have better living conditions, a "guaranteed future" becoming a beneficiary of the country's progress.

The detailed instructions of the work proposals contained in the scripts and guidance manuals for literacy teachers reveal the concern, by the members of MOBRAL Central, with the correct use of this material and the direction of the teaching practice. There was no room for reflection or questioning of the methodological principles and the operation of the program. By emphasizing high illiteracy rates as a major social evil and an obstacle to economic development, MOBRAL organizers ultimately gave illiterate adults responsibility for the country's educational backwardness. In this perspective, the government would already be doing its part by offering training and professional qualification, the success of MOBRAL and the country's progress would depend on the adhesion of the illiterate and the community.

Under the influence of UNESCO in Brazil, the 1950 Demographic Census considered as "knowing how to read and write means people who can read and write a simple note in any language" (^{FERRARO, 2002}, p.31). However, in the MOBRAL manuals this classification went beyond the census definition of “knowing how to read and write”, the illiterate was viewed as an individual living in “a limited world”, and because of their ingenuity, low self-esteem and passivity would be easily persuaded and influenced, as long as the teacher took the predetermined attitudes in the teacher's manual. These guidelines highlight the strategies established for teachers, for the involvement and manipulation of illiterate adults.

The orientation guides and handbooks of the literacy teachers also defined methods, work techniques and activities, considered by the central MOBRAL team as capable of obtaining better results and greater student achievement. Standardized methodologies for teaching reading, writing and mathematics and suggestions on how to use the teaching material, the steps to follow to explore the poster and the generating word, recommendations on the use of continuing reading books and supplementary materials, what to do in the early days of class, guidance on the preparation of classes and the preparation of the Lesson Plan, instructions on how to track student development and evaluate writing, reading, and math were prescribed in these publications. Even in the moments reserved for debate and group discussion, they had guidelines on how act in order to avoid deviations and contain possible conflicts. There was no room for innovation and intervention by the literacy teacher, since the manuals had the contents already established and the lessons to be worked on, the dynamics of the classes and the context of the debates.

Final Considerations

Recognizing mass education as an important mechanism for building collective and individual consciousness, the government used MOBRAL as an instrument for maintaining political power; for the legitimation of the current economic-social structures of domination; mitigation of social tensions, and even the concealment of existing conflicting relations. While legitimizing the military government, it would get away from popular, public and liberating education aiming to co-opting excluded populations and the working classes into political and participatory neutrality.

With changes in Brazil’s economic, social and political scenario in the late 1970s and early 1980s that pointed to a progressive political opening and having seen an increased opposition to the movement within the government among the professionals and technocrats of education, members of MEC and Ipea¹¹, MOBRAL tried to justify its existence and the need for continuity and expansion of its field of activity when establishing the Permanent Education System and diversification of its programs.

However, the reformulations, the diversification of the programs, and the entire organizational structure set up to operate in all Brazilian municipalities, were not sufficient to achieve the initial and priority goal of MOBRAL: eradicate illiteracy by 1980. Data from the IBGE Demographic Census show that from 1970 to 1980 there was a reduction of only 8.2% in the illiteracy rate among people aged 15 years and over, precisely the target audience of MOBRAL:

The administrative structure and the complexity of its supervisory and information systems and logistics reveal the centralization, hierarchization and austerity in process control. The choice of Arlindo Lopes Corrêa as executive secretary and president of MOBRAL, reflecting the technocracy that permeated the operation of the movement, confirms the influence of Ipea and the Ministry of Planning. Corrêa stands out as the creator, manager and representative of MOBRAL, an intellectual who sought to mediate the institution's political and ideological unity and to legitimize his work before public opinion. Even after three decades of the extinction of MOBRAL, Corrêa remained steady in his technocratic orientation and in defending the movement, considered by him to be a pioneering and innovative institution that accomplished unprecedent work for Brazilian education.

The emphasis on the standardization of the procedures to be followed reduced the literacy teacher to a mere executor of a previously established program. The idea disseminated in the scripts and teacher's manuals was that Mobral methodology was so well structured and supervised that together with the didactic material, they would be able to supply the other needs.

The ideals of nation, progress, and democracy, contrast with the political and social context of the civil-military dictatorship established; the idea conveyed in MOBRAL publications is that the country lived orderly, and that the people would have their rights contemplated and better life conditions. There was no room for questioning and conflict, “order and progress” was the maxim disseminated by the teaching materials. His lessons and adverstising campaigns conciliated pro-government publicity with the exaltation of MOBRAL and its achievements.

From the critical evaluation of Mobral's educational proposal, regarding the political, economic and social context of its time, it is evident the contradiction of an authoritarian and exclusionary regime that proclaimed the universalization and democratization of education. One of the main reflexes of this contradiction was precisely the failure of MOBRAL to achieve its objectives.